A scientific breakthrough by researchers in the US has left open the possibility that the meat on our dinner plates in the future could originate in vats of nutrients, rather than on farmyard animals.
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The scientists at Touro College, New York were commissioned by NASA to grow just the edible muscle for which animals are slaughtered. They cut slices of muscle between 5cm and 10cm long from goldfish, and washed them in alcohol before immersing the flesh in a nutrient-rich liquid extracted from the blood of unborn calves (this foetal bovine serum is commonly used as a medium for growing cell cultures).
Lead researcher Professor Morris Benjaminson reported in the New Scientist magazine that the flesh pieces had grown by 14% in one week, and that they looked and smelled like conventional fish meat when fried in olive oil, lemon, garlic and pepper.
“We wanted to make sure it’d pass for something you could buy in the supermarket,” he said: “They said it looked like fish and smelled like fish, though they didn’t go as far as tasting it.”
“This could save you having to slaughter animals for food,” he added.
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By GlobalDataThe experiment was commissioned as part of a drive to find a simple source of fresh, nutritious food for astronaughts, who travel long distances often for long periods of time. The freeze-dried or squeezable tubes of food currently available are often seen as unappealing and rather boring.
The scientists cannot taste the vat-grown flesh until they receive approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
